The Legs Are the Last to Go by Diahann Carroll Read Free Book Online Page B

their princess, a Harlem princess. Though my father rarely said very much, they adored me and surrounded me with everything, from toys and clothes to hugs at night, that made me feel loved and secure, and on a pedestal all my own.
    I took my role in my elementary school production of Pinocchio very seriously, and so did my mother. “All right, let’s study your lines now,” she’d tell me. We’d rehearse together. “Did you like that, Mommy?” I’d say, working until my bedtime. I was relentless in my determination to have every little line and every little action perfected, and she was with me every step of the way, as much a coach as an accomplice. “Should I say it like this or that? Faster or slower? High or low?” For weeks, I couldn’t talk about anything but that elementary school play. My mother never tired of it.
    And she took my costume as seriously as any mother possibly could. I was only seven years old, and it was only made of crepe paper, but you’d have thought it was wardrobe for a queen the way she fussed over it. “How should I wear this, Mommy? What about the hat?” I played Jiminy Cricket, the little voice of conscience. It was a good role for me, since my parents had been vigilant in teaching me about propriety at every level. The girl who was Carol Diann was not allowed to chew gum or use rough language or hang around on the street after school with other girls on our Harlem block. I had to practice piano, not one hour, but two, every day. “All respectable young people know how to play the piano,” my mother would say as I’d sit down and tap the keys on the spinnet in our living room. “Does that make you not respectable?” I always wanted to ask her. Just outside the window, kids were playing, hanging around. I never cared about missing out on that. I had my music, a civilizing sound in a scrappy neighborhood.
    I had to devote all my extra time to my studies and to rehearsals for the Tiny Tots choir at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Our church was the most important institution in Harlem, overseen by Adam Clayton Powell Sr., and a place where you dressed to the nines every Sunday. My father was a deacon. I was always dressed better than any other child, and Iwas a natural talent, never shy or apprehensive in front of the congregation. I loved being the soloist, and to this day I remember stepping out of the line of other little singers in our black-and-white robes, and looking way down beyond the pulpit to my audience, opening my mouth, and with only a little fear, opening it to sing “Balm in Gilead” and “No Hiding Place Down There.” The chorus behind me backed me up in a way that felt so empowering. The congregation was smiling in the brightly lit tabernacle, with friendly black faces all around and above me in the balconies, as they fanned themselves in the heat. Afterward, when I took off my robe to go home, or perhaps to a carefully prepared picnic at Edgecombe Park, I looked regal. My mother saw to that. It was always her goal to make me look as clean and pretty as possible.
    For piano recitals, she would seize the chance to be my stylist and fixate on putting me in the loveliest dress—organza or cotton with crinolines underneath. Sometimes I’d go with her to buy fabrics at the open market under the bridge of the L train on Park Avenue. “Oh no, no, no, no,” she’d say as she tested how quickly a fabric would wrinkle in her hands. If it stayed wrinkled, no matter how pretty, and how much I wanted her to have it made into a dress for me, she’d put it down. Then she’d pick up another fabric and tug at it as the subway rumbled on the tracks above us. It was hot, and she still had to prepare dinner thirty blocks away. But there was no deterring her. “No, not this one, either,” she’d say as she’d put down the fabric and move on. It always took a long time